Davies’ second feature film could also be seen as his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The Long Day Closes plays out as a series of scenes from the everyday life of 11-year-old Bud whose approaching adolescence in 1950s England also means the coming of a reckoning with his sexuality. In the meantime, he escapes from poverty and schoolyard bullying into the warmth of his family and the fantasy world of the movies and popular music. Elegant dissolves from shot to shot pile up the associations between otherwise isolated events as the camera drifts ceaselessly. The mise en scene doesn’t distinguish between memory and reverie, reflecting the dreamy nature of the young boy at the film’s heart.
Directed by Terence Davies. With Leigh McCormack, Marjorie Yates, Anthony Watson
UK 1992, 35mm, color, 85 min